Termites invade houses in their search for cellulosic foodstuffs. The damage to US properties is put at about $1 billion per annum. Various methods have been used to protect buildings from being infested with termites, and many more methods used to rid the buildings of termites once infested.
The market has historically been dominated by pre-construction intensive spray application of long residual pesticides on to a foundation soil surface prior to the laying of the concrete slab over a plastic sheet such as a Damp-Proof Membrane-DPM, vapor barrier, vapor retarder or the like. Such pesticides as organo-phosphates—eg chlorpyrifos, pyrethroids (e.g. cypermethrin and lambda cyhalothrin) have been employed. More recently, products such as imidacloprid and fipronil have been employed. Other, more environmentally acceptable, methods of termite-proofing a dwelling place have also been developed such as establishing physical barriers to termite entry (e.g. stainless steel mesh underlays, thick paints, composite materials). These have usually not contained pesticides.
Some more recent methods of termite control involve baiting the termite colony with a cellulose matrix containing a termite toxicant. Known bait stations include above-ground stations useful for placement on termite mud tubes and below-ground stations having a tubular outer housing that is implanted in the ground with an upper end of the housing substantially flush with the ground level to avoid being damaged by a lawn mower. A tubular bait cartridge containing a quantity of bait material (with or without any toxic active ingredient) is inserted into the outer housing. In one practice, a baiting system comprising a plurality of bait stations is installed underground around the perimeter of a building. Individual stations are installed in prime termite foraging areas as monitoring devices to get “hits” (termites and feeding damage). When termite workers are found in one or more stations, a bait material containing a toxic active ingredient is substituted for the monitoring bait so that the termite workers will carry it back to the termite nest and kill a portion of the exposed colony. However, this approach does not work if the termites completely consume the monitoring bait and abandon a particular station before the hit is discovered by a technician and the station is baited with toxicant. This problem can be mitigated by increasing a manual inspection interval for individual bait stations. However, the drawback to this approach is a substantial increase in the overall cost of maintaining the baiting system and a reduction in its overall efficiency.
Accordingly, despite the availability of existing baiting stations and systems, there exists a need for more cost effective and reliable detection of termite activity in bait stations for faster colony elimination and enhanced structural protection of buildings.